


body talk

by katarasvevo



Category: To All the Boys I've Loved Before Series - Jenny Han, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018)
Genre: F/M, Peter is so lame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 15:27:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15911055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katarasvevo/pseuds/katarasvevo
Summary: "If you stood in front of a mirror and held up ten roses, you’d see eleven of the most beautiful things on this planet.”"So, the mirror and the roses?" Lara Jean says slowly.





	body talk

They’re combing through the shelves of a dusty thrift store when it occurs to Lara Jean, not for the first time, that Peter’s kind of a menace. And as much as she’d like to say that she means it in the best way possible, that simply isn’t the truth.

“Hey, Lara Jean, how do I look?” he says as he places a moth-eaten hat on top of his head, brandishing a toy wand in front of her face.

Lara Jean quirks up an eyebrow. Peter flicks his wrist, and the dangling glitter-strings from the wand catch on her face. “Do you want the honest answer or the sugarcoated one?” she says, stepping aside so she can avoid the onslaught. But it doesn’t work, though; every step back Lara Jean takes, Peter steps forward by two more.

Peter’s lips stretch to a grin. A mischievous glint lights up his eyes. “Honesty is the best policy. I thought we were in agreement: no more secrets between us. No more lies.”

“Sure you’re not going to come home crying?” Now there’s a smile on Lara Jean’s face that matches Peter’s own: wide and teasing.

“Pssht, I’m sure I can handle the heat, Covey. Lay the big guns on me, I’m ready,” Peter says, as he adds a plastic necklace around his neck, and Lara Jean folds her arms across her chest.

“Well.” She tilts her head to the side as though in solemn contemplation. “You look stupid. Real dumb.”

At this, Peter’s jaw goes slack. His palm closes over his heart, and the wire-cloth wand wilts at the middle - an almost comical effect. “Dang, you’re really out here not holding back punches. And to think that I thought I looked cool.”

“You do look cool. For a fifth grader, that is. Isn’t that how old you are?”

Peter removes the hat first, and then the necklace. And then he lifts up a finger for emphasis, to stress out whatever point he’s about to make next. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on. First of all, I’m twelve. And second of all, you’re really mean, and hurting my feelings. Big time.”

Lara Jean snatches the hat from Peter’s grasp, jams it onto her own head. It’s a silly old thing: all frills and hastily patched-on buttons and candy-pink dye. It’s cute in the way ancient objects are: truthfully ugly but made re-appealing by age. It’s probably due to the nostalgia factor. A preserved spoil of memory.

She thinks she remembers having a hat like this before.

After they’ve cleared that side of the shop, they move onto the next. Here, there are a lot more odds and ends. Trinkets of every size, shape, colour, ranging from normal to utterly bizarre. It’s kind of fascinating, thinking about the objects people have left over the years.

A little girl’s tattered toy bunny. A half-broken heart-shaped pendant that looks as if it had been made to match another. And then:

“Oh, boy, look at what we have here.” Peter disappears for a moment behind a loosely-erected partition, reemerging five seconds later with a book in his hand. From the way he’s holding it, it’s hard to make out the title, but judging by the look on his face, it’s probably something equivalent to the raunchy titles Lara Jean reads on the daily.

Lara Jean flicks a button at his arm. “Hopefully it’s not something, like, porny.”

“Girl, you’re one to talk.” There’s a laugh and then a cough. “Remember the Duchess’s Taste? That sure made for good light reading.”

“There were some historical elements to it,” Lara Jean argues weakly. She blushes a pale pink along her cheekbones. “Actual renaissance-related events. It wasn’t just all weird stuff.”

“Sure. Keep telling yourself that horse-skin condoms were an actual thing.” He leans forward onto a table with his elbows, flipping through the pages with renewed interest.

Lara Jean pouts. “They could’ve been. Anyway, ugh, enough about that. Moving on.” She blows to the side a lock of stray hair that has fallen over her face. “I wanna know what exactly it is that you’re reading.”

Peter looks up, then gives her a cheeky grin, the implications of which aren’t lost on her. It’s suspicious. “So, there’s gonna be a big sale in my bedroom later on. Huge blowout,” he says, nudging her leg with a shoe.

“Um. What?” Lara Jean raises her eyebrows. She thinks she has an idea of where this is heading towards.

Peter says, “ _Clothes._ They’re a hundred percent off,” and yeah, bingo.

“ _No,_ ” Lara Jean says, and at this Peter protests, still smiling, “Well, that’s what the book said. And it turns out there’s a whole lot more like it. Flirting stuff.”

“You’re insufferable, Peter Kavinsky,” she groans, burying her face into her hands.

There’s a thud on the table - Peter putting down the book - and then the sensation of a pair of hands wrapping gently around her wrists, tugging. “C’mon, you’re no fun,” he says, pulling her forward. “Because here, I have another one for you: if you stood in front of a mirror and held up ten roses, you’d see eleven of the most beautiful things on this planet.”

That’s nothing she hasn’t heard before. Lara Jean pauses, pretends to think. “So, the mirror … and the roses,” she says slowly.

“I was talking about you. Ugh.” Peter shakes his head. “Next one, then: if I had to rate you out of ten, you’d get a nine because I’m the one that you’re missing.”

Lara Jean hums. “Surprisingly, we’re both in agreement. I mean, you do make a pretty solid one, if we’re going by the same scale.”

The amusement in Peter’s voice swells. “There you go with hurting my feelings again. How are you an expert at this?”

“I’m a quick study.”

Peter’s voice lowers as he brings his mouth to the shell of her ear. “What about ‘your lips look so lonely, would they like to meet mine’?” His hand drifts down to the curve of her waist. Teasingly, deliberately.

Lara Jean nudges his chin away, laughing. “They’d have to go through my fist first. I’d like to see them try, though.”

“Lara Jean, you’re the reason Santa even has a naughty list,” Peter says, eyes as dark as black glass, as midnight. Voice low and rough, abraded. It makes her throat hitch.

“You have to do a lot better than that, Kavinsky,” she teases, and there it is, that dimple in her smile that Peter has so often made comments about.

Peter chases a path towards her chin using his mouth, and then pulls away, saying, “Ah, screw it. I forgot what I was about to say because I just want to kiss you already.

Lara Jean makes a noise at the back of her throat. “This is so anticlimactic.”

“Then let me make it up to you, Covey. Easy there. I’m a man of my word,” he says, surging forward to ghost his lips along the line of her neck, hands easing back to where they were on her hips, the drag of his fingers fire against the pale flesh above her jeans, and then -

An irritated cough sounds from behind them. They spring apart hastily, Peter’s elbow almost knocking over a precarious stack of books, Lara Jean letting out a surprised yelp.

There’s a severe, frowning woman looking at both of them disapprovingly. Besides her, a little boy is watching them with wide eyes, his action figure frozen in mid-leap.

“Oops,” Peter says, at the same time Lara Jean stammers out an apology.

 

･ﾟ✧*:

 

Later on, when they are back in the car, Peter says, “Well, that was bad.”

“It was more than bad; it was so embarrassing,” Lara Jean says, still obviously mortified.

There’s a beat of silence. And then Peter is saying, “So …. since we’re far away now, do you think that we could maybe try it again?”

An even longer silence passes before Lara Jean bothers to respond. “Maybe if you say please.”

  


**Author's Note:**

> here's another short n sweet piece guys, i got home late and rlly tired but i felt like doing a bit of writing,, hopefully you aren't sick of me yet, & as always ty for reading!!!


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